It is surprising and satisfying at the same time to discover that many people in New Smyrna Beach like Nathan Swerling, who buses tables at Clancy's Cantina, realize that foreign trade is good for the U.S and good for them in particular. Yet others like Lyndie Helmsderfer of Kilman's Jewelers think we should be doing less. Everyone, of course, is entitled to their opinion, though, it is a complex situation that might change people's minds if explained better. Talking to a group of local professionals and businessmen, I found that they all agreed that foreign trade is a good thing. Surprisingly many others felt the same way. For example, Nathan Swerling working as a bus boy at Clancy’s Cantina said, “Personally I think international trade is very good. It definitely helps me.” Courtney Mann 30 , A waitress at Clancy’s agreed. On the other side of the ledger, Lyndie Helmsderfer,35, working at Kilman’s Jewelers, said, "We should be doing less of it." To understand why foreign trade is good for us, you have only to ask the question, ”What would your economic life be like if you could buy only products made in Florida ?” Then ask the question,” Would your economic life get better if you could also buy from the surrounding states.?” Finally, ask, "Would things get better if you could trade with the whole United States ?” As the trade area expands to include the whole country everyone can see that their economic life gets better and better. It can be seen that there is no reason to stop at the border. Things will continue to improve as we expand our trade to cover the whole world. When we talk about trading with other countries a number of misconceptions arise which should be dealt with. First, it should be noted that there is virtually no unbalance when it comes to the value of exchange in both directions across our borders. If we were to buy things from outside the country while those outside the country bought things of much less total value from us it would mean that they were stockpiling paper while we were accumulating valuable goods and services. This, of course, is not going to happen. The foreigners holding our paper dollars are going to want to trade the paper money for something of value. The erroneous concept of a trade imbalance comes about because not everything of economic value crossing our borders is counted. Manufactured goods are counted while the value of financial transactions and investments is not. Since there is more foreign investment in the U.S. than visa versa this contributes heavily to the so called trade imbalance. Since trade is balanced, we can cut the trade in both directions simultaneously by levying tariffs and quotas on goods and services coming into the United States. This is what happened during the great depression with the heavy Smoot-Hawley tariffs. These tariffs went a long way to ruining our economy especially for farmers. By the same token, we can literally force the rest of the world to trade more with us simply by buying more from the rest of the world. While reciprocity is a great thing we don’t need it to expand foreign trade. Many have commented and complained that so much we buy from places likeWal-Mart is made in places like China. They ask the question, ”Couldn’t we be making these things here and why don’t we? " One answer to this question is that, yes, we could make those things here, but we would much rather let the Chinese make them. We prefer to put our efforts into things that better suit our capabilities. This goes back to the concept of relative advantage that says each country tends to do those things that it does best. As an example, while we could make more pottery we could have to give up manufacturing more high tech items to do it than the Chinese would. This translates into a higher cost to make pottery here than in China. Even though foreign trade is good for the economy, tariffs and quotas are very popular with the politicians. This popularity is due to the fact that the small concentrated groups who are helped by the tariffs and quotas will pay big campaign contributions to the politicians. Meanwhile, the Americans who are hurt by these actions are unaware of their plight. Moreover the per taxpayer cost of any particular tariff is usually quite low and therefore people are not apt to pay for not having tariffs and quotas. When it comes to a choice between doing the right thing that helps everybody and reaping big campaign support and contributions it is a no brainer choice for most of the politicians. It is true that some people will be hurt, at least temporarily, by foreign competition. However, trying to protect American jobs by tariffs and quotas is a very expensive and counterproductive effort that loses jobs in other parts of the economy and hurts the consumer. An illustrative case in point is the recent steel tariffs. The effects of the tariffs on the rest of the economy were so bad that the tariffs were rescinded. It has been estimated that each job saved temporarily in the steel industry cost the country about $800,000. The American people are reaping similar “benefits” from most of the other tariffs and quotas we have in place. The bottom line on this issue is that with few exceptions free trade benefits all Americans. Any politician who advocates protectionism should be looked at with great suspicion because he or she is probably self serving about many of the other issues he or she is promoting.